This
story details explicit gay sex between men, teens and boys. If you find this
kind of thing distasteful, or if you are underage wherever you live, then stop
reading this now, and delete this file. The story is completely fictional; the author
does not condone or encourage any of the acts contained herein.

-------------------------------------------

Craigslist

Chapter 72

By: Tim Keppler (nemoami@yahoo.com)

Edited by: Bob Leahy

We're
having babies! Well, we're getting babies. Can you believe that? I'm actually
going to be a father! That's something no one would have predicted. We are all
just so damned excited. This was a long time coming, but ultimately it just
fell into our laps. I guess I should explain...

A year
or so ago, Ian said he wanted children. This was shortly before Shawn joined our
family. I don't think my reaction to his announcement was what Ian had hoped
for. I wasn't against it, but I wasn't for it either. I'd never really thought
about it, I guess. I mean, children? Me? Leslie Fung? A
father? But he planted a seed. We were sitting in the Rose Garden, over
by Tim's place. We were babysitting "the boys" – Tim's two youngest kids. They
were out on the lawn, throwing a frisbee back and
forth, and Ian and I were sitting on one of the benches, watching. They'd worn
us out shagging the damned frisbee. When Kai throws a frisbee, there's no telling where it's going to end up. It
could land right in your hand, and then again, it could end up in the next
county. You end up running like a maniac to catch it. Coordination isn't his
strong suit, yet. He's really fun to watch, though. He treats a frisbee like a discus. He spins around a couple of times,
and then finally releases it in whatever direction he happens to be pointed
when he decides he's spun enough. God knows where he got this technique, but it
is really cute – exhausting, but cute.

This
wasn't our first time babysitting the boys. We've done it a lot. Ian's crazy
about them, and Jason knows it, so we have lots of opportunities. I have to admit,
I find them pretty adorable. Tim, Kenny, Jason and Dinh have done a really good
job with them. They're well-behaved, but also mischievous and fun-loving. With
Kenny they get away with nothing. Jason's the same. But with Tim, well, they
sort of melt his heart. He'd spoil them if he could, but Jason and Kenny won't
have it. They keep these kids on a very tight leash. Watching them today,
though, you'd never know it. They are romping, and running, and tripping over
each other. The thing about these guys that strikes me as...different is that
they're genuinely crazy about each other. They seem to be best friends. The
only time they're not together is when they're at school. Ian told me that when
he was living with Tim and Co., the boys would sleep together pretty much every
night. They started out in their own beds, but every morning you'd find them
curled up in Kevin's bed. It got to a point, apparently, where Tim went out and
bought Kevin a double bed. "Why fight it?" he'd asked. "If they're gonna sleep together, they're gonna
sleep together, and at this point they've outgrown a twin. They're too damned
big. Petty soon, one of them is going to fall out."

As we
sat there watching that frisbee sail by, Ian brought
it up. "You know, I want kids," he said. "I want a lot of kids, but for the
moment, I'll settle for two."

It was
out of the blue, apropos of nothing. "Kids? Why?"

"Because I like them. They give me a sense of creating something new, of
passing something of value back to the world."

I was a
little taken aback. I'd never though of kids philosophically. My take on kids
has always been visceral – they're cute, or they're fun, or they're funny.
They're something to love. Ian wanted kids because they represented a way of
giving back to a world that had been good to him. They were a gift he could
bestow.

"How,
exactly, do you propose that we manufacture kids?" I asked with a laugh.

Kai and
Kevin came from Kenny's sister. She died of cancer several years ago, and just
before her death, Tim adopted her kids. They are Kenny's nephews, Jason's
second cousins, and Tim's adopted sons. They bind their three daddies' together
a lot more solidly than any scrap of paper the state might bestow on their
relationship. Evan, Tim's 17-year-old, was a homeless kid who used to hang out
at the gay center he runs. Tim adopted him, too, just as he did Ian several
years ago when Ian's parents were killed in a car accident. These were all kids
who basically fell into Tim's lap. They came out of the blue, and I have no sense
that he was initially even interested in kids. But, he's interested now. He
loves and cherishes his adopted kids a lot more than many biological fathers
I've met. But at the time, they were all flukes. He didn't go looking for these
children. They came and found him, and the likelihood of that happening to us
(or anyone) is pretty slim, at least that's what I would have told you a year
ago. And then a bunch of dominos began to fall.

Buddhists
believe that a key to happiness is banishing desire, but another tenet of the
philosophy revolves around being open to what life brings you. To me, these two
positions have always seemed to be in conflict. On the one hand you purge your
desires, but at the same time you make clear to the universe what your desires
are so that they can be fulfilled. Neither Ian nor I is a particularly-good
Buddhist. It's one of the very few rational philosophies / religions, though,
so I respect it – even when I don't understand it, and it works, but I have no
idea why. Soon after Ian admitted to me that he wanted children – effectively
putting a call out into the universe– one of his students came to him to
talk. Actually, he came to him to cry. Ian had, by now, been working for the
past year as a teaching assistant for Cassandra Moore, one of the remaining
lights in the whole Transactional Analysis school of psychology. Cassie was
very smart, and loved Ian like a son. She knew us well, knew Tim, even knew Shawn. She was a good friend to all of us.

Ian's
student, a kid from Hong Kong, had made it
into Stanford based on a family income that was fairly substantial. His mother
was the primary breadwinner. She was the VP of Distribution for a Chinese
company that exported tennis shoes (trainers) to other countries. His father
stayed at home in Kowloon
playing the stock market and taking care of their kids. Hai,
Ian's student, had three brothers, all much younger than he, so much younger, in fact, that he'd never laid eyes on two of them.
The youngest was two years old, the middle child was three and a half, and the
oldest was four and a half. Hai was distraught.
Unbeknownst to him, his mother apparently has suffered from Lupus for several
years. Lupus is a nasty disease. A chronic
autoimmune disorder, it affect the joints and almost every major organ in the
body, including the heart, kidneys, skin, lungs, and brain. Basically what
happens is that the immune system, which is designed to protect against
infection, mistakenly attacks the body's own tissues and organs, causing
inflammation, sometimes severe inflammation. While not specifically
degenerative, it does, over the course of time, take its toll on every system
of the body. Hai's mother had suffered renal failure.
Her kidneys had shut down. She'd been on dialysis. Ultimately, though, she'd
died of heart failure, and his father had called two nights ago to announce
that his mother was dead.

Hai hadn't even known that she was sick. Now she
was dead. Worse, without his mother's income, he would have to quit school. His
father, it turned out, was not a very good investor, and when the market
crashed, he was left with next to nothing. With no savings, and no income,
there was no money for tuition. Hai's education was
about to come to an abrupt halt, or so Hai thought.

The thing about higher education, though, is that the market is
awash in scholarships. They're everywhere. You just have to know how to claim
them, and how to play the system. You have to recognize your uniqueness and
capitalize on it. Honestly, there are scholarships for everything imaginable.
There are scholarships for left-handed people. There are scholarships for
people going into the field of microbiology. There are scholarships for the
overweight. Endowed by private institutions and individuals, there are
scholarships for every characteristic known to man, anything that might have
caused someone rich some level of angst at some point in their life. So, let's
see. What was unique about Hai, Ian asked himself. He was Chinese and he was gay. That's a start. He
called a friend who worked at an art foundation, and got the name of a company
that specialized in matching applicants with scholarships. Two days later, Hai was "endowed" with at least enough money to make it
through to the end of the quarter, and more applications for additional grants
and scholarships than he could count. His tuition and living expenses were
clearly not going to be a problem.But,
they were also not his only challenges.

Several nights after the first call announcing his mother's
death, his father called again. "You need to come home to mind your brothers so
I can get a job." Unfortunately,
his father has no skills. He's done
nothing for the past twenty years except play the market and mind children. And
he hates children. Hai remembers that hatred vividly
from his own childhood.

It's at this point that I became aware of the problem. It's at
this point that Ian mentions it, that he begins to talk about it at home. It's
at this point that Ian brings Hai home – for dinner. Hai is very upset. The idea of returning to Hong Kong and becoming his father's "wife" doesn't appeal
to him. He doesn't like children either, but even if he did, at 20 years old,
with a promising career ahead of him, why would he want to devote his life to
them? Ian had asked if he had pictures of his brothers, and Hai
brought some along with him when he came to dinner. They're cute kids.

"Well, if he doesn't like the kids, why doesn't he just adopt
them out? No need for you to be their mother," Ian says with a laugh.

Hai looks pensive. "Yes. I told him the same
thing. But adoptions take time. You have to find someone willing to adopt, and
these aren't infants. Most Chinese want infants, like
here."

Ian nods, looking thoughtful. "But, what if he had people
willing to adopt them?"

"Well, then the process would be very quick. It would probably
take a couple of weeks. It's finding the adoptive parents
that's the hard part, and doing that for all three of them. It could
take years."

Ian looks across the table at me. I nod. "What's the difference,
in terms of time, between being adopted by Chinese nationals and foreign
parents?"

Hai is stunned. We're eating pork tenderloin, and
he simply stops chewing, and stares at Ian blankly. What can be going on in his
mind? What can he be working on? Finally, he looks up. "But, you're gay," he
says. "The Chinese government doesn't adopt to gay
people."

"The Chinese government doesn't know I'm gay. Not even the
American government knows that."

"Yes, but if you're single, male, and American they'll assume
you're gay. There have been many examples of this."

They pause, staring at each other pensively. "What if I were
single, male, and Singaporean?" Ian asks.

Hai looks lost again, and then gets it. He looks
at me. I'm Singaporean. He smiles. "Yeah, that'd probably work."

-------------------------------------------

You cannot know how fucking complicated this is. Ian, a single,
white male is immediately suspect of the Chinese government. They will block
any adoption he tries to carry out in China, because they'll assume he's
queer. I, on the other hand, will fly under the radar. Singaporeans can't be
queer, can they? The Chinese will let me adopt these kids, but where can I take
them? To Singapore, of
course, where, after a while, I'll (hopefully) be able to get them passports so
I can get them into the U.S.
I have a green card, but I'm not a U.S. citizen. These kids weren't
born in the U.S.
This is a mess...

...or, this is a great adventure, depending on your perspective. We'd
discussed this...extensively. We wanted kids, Ian, Shawn and I, but none of us
was really excited about infants. Unlike most of the rest of the population, I
guess, I'm not crazy about babies. I like them a little older. So, the idea of
surrogacy didn't really appeal. Hai'sbrothers, though were a gift made from heaven. They were
just the right age and would, in all likelihood, have a better life with us than
they had right now. It's a big decision, raising kids, and it took me a while
to cozy up to it. But it's interesting, because once Ian told me he wanted
them, so did I. Sometimes this is how you find out about yourself. Someone
plants an idea in your head, and it's a revelation. I honestly didn't know what
this adoption would entail. I didn't what it would involve. We have all summer
to pull this off, though, so I was reasonably confident we could get it done.

I fly over to Hong Kong three
days after the close of classes for Stanford's spring term. I'd been teaching an
upper-division course in Melville, and a graduate seminar: Leitmotifs in the Victorian Novel. I needed two days to plow
through the final papers and to get the grades in before taking off. I made
that deadline by the skin of my teeth. I think I was reading the final paper in
the airport departure lounge. It was on Billy
Budd. It was one of those papers that brands Claggert
(the Master at Arms in the story) as a faggot. I specifically told this class
not to research the available criticism. I was looking for their candid
responses to the story. But some number of students always research anyway. Do
they honestly think I don't know? Do they honestly think that I think that these are original ideas?
Do they honestly believe that I haven't read everything on anything I assign
them? I had one student last quarter who appropriated
large sections of Cleanth Brook's work into his essay
on Hardy's Jude the Obscure. Brook
was one of the most-famous literary critics of his generation. Did this student
honestly think I wouldn't recognize him?

Hong Kong is about fourteen hours from San Francisco. It's a long fucking flight,
and I can rarely sleep on planes. I do manage to get few hours sleep, though,
and the good news is that this is Cathay Pacific. It's a Chinese airline, and
is affiliated with American Airlines. Tim has about a million frequent-flyer
miles on American, so we all mooch off of him. I'm flying first class, so the
flight is comfortable, if long. I get a Combination Seafood Congee for
breakfast. Yum. This is a breakfast that Jason would
serve me, and Jason can seriously cook.

Someone
is waiting for me when I get out of customs. He has a sign like limousine
drivers use with my name on it: "Leslie Fung". It's written in English. I guess
he didn't know my Chinese first name.

"Hi," I say in Cantonese, approaching the guy with the sign.
"I'm Leslie Fung. Did Mr. Zhao (Hai's father) send
you for me?"

"I am Zhao," he says, crumpling his sign. "Let's go." He takes
me to the train station below the terminal, pays for two tickets, and we ride
at high speed to central Hong Kong, and then
walk to his apartment. Not a word do we exchange along the way. This feels very
much like a "transaction" to me. It feels like I'm here to buy a house. It does
not feel like I'm here to adopt children, and it keeps
not feeling like that throughout the course of our interactions.

When we reach his apartment, the boys are there, along with
their aunt, Zhao's sister, who has been taking care of them. Another man is
here as well, a lawyer, who has the adoption paperwork in order – all in
Chinese, of course. I scan through the documents. What I want to be doing right
now is getting to know the boys, all of whom look really apprehensive, really
scared. What have they been told, I wonder? What do they think this means? Their aunt looks...grim. She looks like one of those communist
nurses you saw in anti-communist propaganda years ago – a sterile frump who was
paid to take care of your children. No wonder the kids look so frightened.
There is, in fact, an anti-faggot clause in the contract. "I certify that I am
not a homosexual...blah...blah...blah..." Who gives rat dick? What will happen to me after
I sign this? Will the ghost of Mao himself come to San Jose and fuck me up the ass for lying?

Having read the adoption contract, I sign it, and almost the
instant I do, I am lead out of the apartment with the three boys in tow. I
expected to be housed at least overnight. That doesn't happen. I flag down a
taxi, and we go to a hotel that was recommended to me by a colleague. It's not
so bad. We need to stay in Hong Kong until the
adoption becomes final. It shouldn't be more that a week or so, according to
Zhao's lawyer. In the meantime, I have the boys, and they are seriously
freaked. They have no idea what's going on, and no idea who
I am. No one has told them anything, apparently. That'll be my job. When we get
to the hotel, they're mesmerized, especially the oldest, Feng.
At four and a half, he's dazzled by the opulence of what is a two-star hotel by
American standards. I don't think he's ever been in a place like this before.
It's a palace. The suite has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and I think that's
what surprises him. He wanders from bedroom to bedroom, from bathroom to
bathroom. "Which bathroom I can use?" he asks me.

"Which one do you want to use?" I reply.

He looks completely confused, and I realize that I've given him
too many options.

"Use that one," I say, pointing to the larger of the two. He
nods, and goes off to pee, marking his territory, perhaps. When he comes back,
I smile. "Is Zhao your daddy?" I ask.

He nods.

"And what did he tell you about me?"

He looks really shy, staring at the ground. "He say you come to take us away, to take us to better place. He
say I should go with you." His grammar is what you'd
expect of a 4-and-a half-year-old child, but my Cantonese is awful, too. We
spoke Mandarin at home, Mandarin and English. Cantonese is a stretch. Having
gotten these sentences out, he starts to cry, and then his brothers, seeing him
crying, start to cry as well, and pretty soon everyone's crying. Everyone's
despondent. It would be tragic if it wasn't so damned funny.

He gets his brothers out of their clothes, and we pile into bed,
a king-sized bed. Where the hell did we find this in Hong
Kong? Feng is behind me, and attaches
himself to my back.Quan and
Tan, his younger brothers, are in front of me, and I reach my arm around and
pull them close. That's all it takes. Once they realize that they're safe
and...loved...they fall asleep.

It takes
six days for the wheels of the legal community to spin. The adoptions are
approved. During that time, we go everywhere. We go to StanleyBeach, where the boys swim, we go
antiquing on Hollywood Road
– you can't know what a joy it is to walk through a store full of antique
porcelain with three squirmy little boys – we even go to Disneyland,
the hit of the trip. And...umm...we bond. I fall hopelessly in love...with three
little boys. Honestly, I had no idea that I was capable of this. By day six,
I'm besotted, and my upper-body strength has improved. I've spent six days
carrying Quan nearly everywhere. At two years old, he
doesn't move very fast. It's better to just carry him. And it's more fun
anyway, because I get to hug him, and...umm...tickle him...and he loves to be
tickled. He reminds me of Kai.

On day
six, I get the certified letter telling me that I'm officially the daddy of
these boys. Next step: ferry them to Singapore to get them passports,
because that's their new nationality. Like me, they're now Singaporean. I
arrange for four coach seats on Singapore Airlines for the next day. We'll get
in at around 3 pm, and my father has agreed to pick us up at the airport. My
mother is nearly beside herself with excitement. Not only is her son coming to
visit, a son she hasn't seen in a couple of years, a son who is now a Doctor of
Philosophy in English, as she's told all her friends, but he's bringing her
grandchildren, grandchildren she never thought she'd have. She is nearly
frantic, and calls me three times on the day before our flight to remind me to
dress appropriately, to remind me to get these boys jackets, to remind me to...
"Yeah, Mom," I say on the third call, laughing. "Stop calling me, will you? If
you keep calling me, I'll never have time to do all that I have to do before we
leave. I'll have to postpone our flight. We won't see you until next week."
There's silence at the other end of the phone, and then I start to giggle, and
she realizes that I'm playing with her.
She laughs, and agrees that she's been a little too...anxious. "We'll see you
tomorrow, Mom, whether we're dressed warmly enough or not."

The
boys, too, are excited. None of them has ever flown anywhere before, and only Feng has any real concept of what that means. He's excited
to be "going up in the air" and Quan and Tan are
excited because Feng is excited. Feng's
excitement is highly contagious. Me? I'm nervous. I've been assured both by
Zhao's lawyer and by the immigration people that getting these boys from Hong
Kong to Singapore
will not be a problem, even though they don't have passports. "They are your
sons," Zhou's lawyer tells me. "They will travel on your passport. You are a
Singaporean national. There will be no problem." I wonder, though. My worst
nightmare is not trying to leave Hong Kong. My
worst nightmare is arriving in Singapore
and being deported back to Hong Kong because
the boys don't have the proper documents. But, we're going to do this. We're
going to try to get these boys to Singapore, and if we do, I think
we're home free.

And it
turns out to be clear sailing. The airline checks our documents, my passport
and the adoption papers, and waves us through. The Hong
Kong immigration officials aren't concerned, either. And when we
get to Singapore,
we sail through customs and immigration. We're in. Now, it's just a matter of
getting these guys documented as Singaporeans so they can get into the U.S.

My
father meets us at the airport. I have Quan slung
over one shoulder, and Tan slung over the other, both sound asleep. Feng is holding onto my coat. He's a walking zombie, having
woken up only minutes before. He's basically still asleep. When my father sees
us, he scoops Feng into his arms. "Hello, little
man," he says.

"Hello,"
Feng responds, drowsily.

By the
time we get to the car, Feng, too, is asleep. My
father lowers the back seat of his Honda hatchback, and we pile the boys inside
where they sleep through most of the perilous drive across town. I've forgotten
how congested Singapore
is. It's not just congested at the end
of the day, it's congested all day.
When we get home (and it takes us nearly an hour to do that) my mother is just
so excited. The boys have woken up, which is good, because there'll be no
sleeping through mom. "Hello," she screams at them. Quan, the youngest, sees
the glint in her eyes, and runs to her. She scoops him up and tosses him into
the air, catching him on the way down. She hugs him mightily, and he giggles.
"How are you?" she asks in perfect Cantonese. I had no idea she speaks
Cantonese, but she does. They bond almost instantly. Right behind her are Ian and Shawn. They arrived yesterday, I later learn.
The plan was that I'd bring the boys home to San Jose as soon as we got
them passports, but Ian couldn't wait. He convinced Shawn to come along. He
contacted my parents and told them that he wanted to surprise me. I'm
surprised, surprised and touched. The boys are shy around so many strangers,
but warm up to Ian very quickly. He's good with kids. He has a knack for
drawing them out, much of which revolves around tickling. It's a couple of
years later that he tells me his theory about these kids, a theory borne out by
conversations with them. They'd been seriously deprived...and ignored. They were
thirsty for attention of almost any kind, from tickling to a game of tag, from
reading them a story to a simple hug. They longed to be recognized, and they
sure were tonight. My mother couldn't keep her hands off of them. She doted on
them. And they absolutely loved it!

It was
dinner time when we got to my parents' flat, and my mother had made beef noodle
soup. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry to have made something so plain. I was
just so excited and...umm...beef noodle makes itself."

"I LOVE
beef noodle," I scream, kissing her on the cheek. "It's exactly what I wanted."

After
dinner, we watch a little TV in the living room over tea. Actually, no one
watches the TV. We all watch the boys who are all giggles, chatting away,
rolling and tumbling. You'd think they'd been with us forever, so comfortable
are they with us now. Tan, the three and a half year old, is especially
rambunctious. He's learned to do summersaults, and never seems to tire of
demonstrating this skill. After a while, though, it's time for bed...for all of
us. Between the travel and the stress of schlepping these boys between two
countries, I'm exhausted. There's only one spare bedroom in my parents' flat,
so it's going to be...cozy. Feng, Quan
and Tan pile into bed first, and then Ian, Shawn and I follow, interspersing
ourselves between the boys. It is a tight fit in this queen-sized bed, and I
realize how sardines must feel. Still, it's very sweet. I couldn't be happier.

It takes
us four days to get the passports. I basically camp out at the immigration
office, pushing them along to get it done. We'd gotten photos taken at the
local Kinko's. Who knew there was a Kinko's in Singapore? The photos are really
cute. Feng has big ears, and looks a little like
Mickey Mouse. I think he's adorable, but he hates his photo. While I'm at
Immigration, my parents take Ian, Shawn, Feng, Quan and Tan everywhere. EVERYWHERE! They go to the ButterflyPark,
to the JurongBirdPark,
to the Singapore Zoo, to Underwater World, to the ScienceCenter, and even to SnowCity.
It's an indoor center where they manufacture show so you can slide in it...in the
middle of hot and muggy Singapore.
I haven't even been to some of these places, but my folks are just relentless.
They want to boys to see the sights. And they do!

After
four days, I have their passports in hand and I have visas to get these boys into
the U.S.
I also have reservations for flights from Singapore
to L.A. and from L.A.
to San Jose for
the very next day. And, of course, I have more tears than I've ever seen. The
boys don't want to leave their new Granny and Grandpa, and Granny and Grandpa
don't want them to leave. I finally have to take them to our room for a talk.
"Guys, there are lots of fun things to do, and lots of things to see. We'll
come back here, and maybe Granny and Grandpa will come visit us sometime. It'll
be okay." All of this in my hopelessly-awful Cantonese.Feng nods, and basically translates for his brothers.
We'll be okay. They'll be okay.

And we
are okay. All of us. Mom and Dad take us to the
airport the next morning. They hug us, every one of us, even Shawn and Ian,
knowing full well what our relationship to each other is. They love me, and
they love my children, and they love my partners. They really don't care how we
have sex, I think. They really don't think about it. They don't think about it
any more than they would if I were part of a straight couple. "Hmmmm... They must fuck each other." And that's about it.
They love us all, and we love them.

Twenty-two
hours later we're home...and asleep. We're all exhausted. Jet lag, stress, and fatigue
from carrying children from here to there. Quan isn't
potty-trained yet, so there's diaper duty, and Tan is very...reticent. He's still
very nervous. The cutest of the three, I think, he's going to take the longest
to get to know. Sometimes he runs from me crying, and sometimes he simply
attaches himself to me and won't let go. I have the sense that he wants to
attach himself to me emotionally, but doesn't know how. He's a very sweet
little boy, but very fearful. It's going to take us some time to connect. Feng is the trooper. Feng takes
charge. Feng will be the CEO of a large company some
day, a captain of industry. When his brothers get out of hand, he reprimands
them...in the gentlest possible way. "You need to mind Daddy," he says to Tan.
And then he hugs him, and pats him on the back. It's very sweet.

Twelve
hours after getting home, we're at Tim's for dinner, and it is a fucking mad
house. The moment our boys catch sight of Tim's boys, it's just all over.
Language isn't a barrier here. Everyone (except Tim) speaks Cantonese fluently.
The kids are out in the back garden within minutes of meeting each other,
racing around, and playing with the cat. Tim's cat – or, actually, I guess it's Kai's cat – is a terror. He loves to play, and is as
likely to chase the boys around as to be chased by them. He's a flaming orange
tabby, moves at warp speed, and is wont to jump from the ground onto Kai's
shoulders. I don't know how he does that without sinking his claws into Kai's
flesh, but he never has, Kai tells me. "He's a
energetic kitty-cat!" Kai says, swinging a purring Thumper around by his paws
as though he's a rag doll.

"And?" Tim says, over dinner. This is a Jason night. We have
stuffed Bitter Melon Soup, Shredded Jelly Fish, Stir-fried Pork with Snap Peas,
an Omelet with Preserved Eggs, and Roasted Bananas in Sticky Rice for dessert. It's
a simple meal, but is done to perfection, like everything Jason cooks. I know
what Tim's asking me. He wants to know how I like having these three munchkins.

"I love
them more than life," I reply, and Ian and Shawn both nod. "I'm not crazy about
changing diapers and cleaning up poop, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.
They're just so damned funny. Sometimes, though, you get insights into their
past that are pretty disturbing. I was sitting with Tan a few days ago, and I
stretched. My arms were over my head. I guess it looked to him as though I was
going to hit him. He cringed and ducked. `I sorry!' he said. He started to cry.
I was really surprised. I asked him what was wrong. He said, near as I can
tell, that he thought I was displeased with him. I hugged him, but I had to
wonder what his life has been like before this. Tan has a lot of baggage,
baggage I don't really understand, and probably never will. Hai
isn't going to be able to fill in the gaps for the two youngest kids. He's
never even met them. We're having dinner with him tomorrow to introduce him to
his brothers. It should be interesting."

"You going to give them American names?" Tim asks.

I pause.
"I don't know. I sort of like their Chi..."

"Yes,"
Shawn interjects. "Ian and I have already chosen them." I am shocked!

"And...?"
Tim says. I look at Ian and Shawn quizzically.

"We'll
name them Kelvin, Korrie and Kyle," Ian says with a
grin.

Kenny,
the original K-boy, has just taken a sip of tea when Ian tells us the names.
Thankfully, he still has his cup in his hand, or the tea in his mouth would be
on my face. He spits the tea back into his cup and starts to laugh
hysterically. It was Kenny who named Kevin and Kai, and at the time I think I
told him he was a Narcissist. He needed all our children to have K-names, like
his. Only the children don't get the joke. Only the children don't laugh. The
rest of us are nearly beside ourselves with laughter.

"Okay,"
Tim says, still choking on laughter.

"What's
funny, Daddy?" Kai asks Tim.

"Nothing, sweetie. Your brother has just decided to name his new sons after
you."

"Really?"
he says. "You gonna name them all Kai?" he asks, amazed.

"Maybe."

"Cool,"
Kai says, smiling. "We can be blood brothers. But...how will we know which Kai is
Kai?"

"Now
there's a problem," Ian says, reaching over and tickling Kai, who dissolves
into laughter.

"Well,
whatever we call these boys," I say, giving Ian and Shawn a mock-angry look,
"we're going to need a bigger apartment. A two-bedroom place in Stanford's married-student
housing isn't going to cut it with three boys. And besides, I'm not a student.
You're supposed to have at least two students living together to qualify for
married-student housing. We don't have..."

"Actually,
we do," Shawn interjects again.

There's
absolute silence. You could hear a pin drop. Jason is grinning, so I assume he
knows what this is about, and Kenny, too, is smiling. Tim has a perfectly
straight face, but I know he knows, too. He knows...something.

"What
the fuck is going on?" I ask.

Shawn smiles. "I'm transferring. Ian and Kenny helped me find
scholarships. I'll be starting in the fall. I've been accepted, and I have the
tuition. I'm going to Stanford," he screams, elated. "I'm going to fucking StanfordUniversity." He's nearly in tears. He's
out of his chair, and he's jumping up and down. He looks just like Kai – well,
apart from the fact that he's not Asian and about fifteen years older. Me? I'm
stunned. Amazed. I motion him to lean across the
table, which he does. I kiss him, a really-good kiss. It's a kiss that
surprises our three new sons.

Finally,
we all sit back down and begin to eat. "Well, regardless of whether we're
technically allowed to continue to live in married student housing, we're going
to need a bigger place," I say between bites of the stuffed bitter melon, one
of my favorite foods. "Two bedrooms aren't enough for us anymore. But, I don't
know that we can afford anything more right now. We're going to need to get a
realtor, and lay out our income, and figure out what we can..."

"Umm...baby,"
Ian interjects.

I stop
and stare at him.

"Do you
remember the Sphinctermanns?" Sphinctermann
is the nickname Tim gave to Bob and Celia Klemperer, his next-door neighbors,
several years ago. During one of the drought years, he forgot to turn off his
drip irrigation system. It ran all night, and the next morning he had a nasty
note from Celia Klemperer on his door telling him in no uncertain terms to be
more water-conscious. Fine. He'd fucked up. He deserved
the repudiation. But, two days later he heard water running. He circled the
house, checking every faucet, and he found a faucet on the Klemperer's side of
the house that had a hose attached to it. The hose led to their swimming pool.
They were filling their pool with Tim's water. They figured that they could
parlay that accidental water fuck-up into a full swimming pool, that Tim
wouldn't notice, that Tim would think that his unusually-high water usage was
the result of his all-night drip system mess up. Tim was livid. He had Bob out
there to show him the hose, and apparently taught him some new curse words Bob
didn't already know. He named them the Sphinctermanns
that day, the gentlest way he could think of to call them assholes every time he
talked about them, and he talked about them a lot. All the neighbors knew about
the incident. He made sure of it. The Sphinctermanns
were the local pariahs. No one would have anything to do with them.

"They
live next door, right?"

"Lived,"
Ian replies. "They move to Southern California
to be near their daughter."

I look
confused, I guess. "So? Did someone else move in?"

"Not
yet."

Now I'm
lost. "Do we know who's moving in?"

"We do,"
Ian replies.

"Who?"

"Us. Tim bought the house. He bought it for us."

I'm stunned
for the umpteenth time this evening. "He bought it for..."

"...you,
yes," Tim chimes in. "Well, Kenny, Dinh, Jason, and I bought it for you. The
education fund was getting a little...bloated. Jason and Kenny have been writing
a lot of songs lately, and making a lot of money. We had some extra and needed
an investment. So, now we own three houses in a row. Ours,
the Sphinctermann's, and Ben and Jeffrey's.
Well, technically four. I own Norma's house across the street as well. She
doesn't know that. I arranged it through her accountant and my attorney. She
was near bankruptcy several years ago. Her accountant told her that a state
grant had come through. He had her sign a bunch of papers in order to receive
the grant. I was the grant, and what she signed was a bill of sale. I was happy
to do it. She's 83 now and a lot better off to be out from under her mortgage."
I guess I look as stunned as I feel. "Look," Tim says, "my grandmother bought a
house three houses down from my parents when they were young. Neither of them were happy about that. I understand why. I bought the house
as an investment. If you want it, it's yours. If you don't want it, that's
fine, too. I love all of you, and will love you whether you live next door or
not."

What do
you say at a moment like this? I think what you say is "Thank you." That's what
I say. Tim has never been intrusive in our lives, so I can't see that living
next door is going to be a problem. And, god knows, this'll make babysitting a
lot easier, not to mention playmates. Norma, his neighbor across the street,
doesn't even know Tim owns her house, so it shouldn't be a problem for us. And
we'll have way more space, and a fucking swimming pool.

"Do you
like to swim?" Jason asks Feng in Mandarin. Feng looks confused. Feng doesn't
speak Mandarin. Kenny translates into Cantonese, and explains the rule. "Jason
will only speak Mandarin to you, so if you want to eat well, you'd better learn
Mandarin. And Tim, Ian, Shawn and Evan will only speak to you in English. They
don't speak Chinese. Jason wants to know if you like to swim."